What Is Next Mr. Pruitt? Will EPA Declare That Smoking Is Good For You?

The near-constant White House shenanigans means that many Americans have missed that President Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency(EPA) has been quietly shredding America’s environmental protections. In just four months, Scott Pruitt seems to be trying to outdo the infamous Reagan-era EPA Administrator, Anne Gorsuch.

Pruitt’s destructive agenda includes plans to slash the agency’s budget by nearly a third, undoing the Clean Power Plan, repealing an Obama-era rule curbing pollution in the nation’s waterways, reopening the 2025 greenhouse gas(GHG) car standards, delaying a rule limiting methane leaks from oil and gas wells, and reversing aban on pesticides that damage children’s nervous systems. He also helped engineer the United States’ withdrawal from the Paris climate accord.

All this is just for starters. While his boss is busy attacking the media, Pruitt has declared war on science. He is gutting EPA’s Science Advisory Boards by dismissing 38 of its 49 members, and has suggested setting up a televised “red team-blue team” debate to test the idea that human activity is the main driver of recent climate change.

This comes in the face of what 97 percent of the world’s climate scientists agree on: Climate-warming trends over the past century are extremely likely due to human activities. Based on 2 million gigabytes of data, 800+ scientists provided input to the landmark 2013 Fifth Assessment Report by the International Panel on Climate Change(IPCC) stated that unless the world acts to curb carbon pollution, we are facing irreversible harm.

But Pruitt’s debate idea is just a ploy – part of the oil industry’s decades-old climate denial strategy, which in turn, is borrowed from the tobacco industry. It is something I witnessed first-hand when, as the…

About

Finding a single source of news on niche topics can be time consuming – until now. The ContentQube Network uses “smart” technology to curate content trending on social media and search based on keywords and categories. Our content discovery engine helps readers stay updated on the latest trends, and introduces them to new publishers daily. We are a referrer to some of the biggest names in the business.

Disclaimer: All the content aggregated is for informational purposes only. The content is owned by the third parties sourced within each article, unless otherwise noted. Attribution and links to the original source are included in each article. OneQube is not responsible for the accuracy of the aforementioned content. If you are the publisher of any of this content and are not interested in the referral traffic, contact us and we will remove the article within 24 hours.